Instruments and their Music in the Middle Ages, edited by
Timothy McGee, is a compilation of twenty-eight essays which have been
central to the research on medieval musical instruments over the last
fifty years. This recent contribution to Ashgate's series, Music
in Medieval Europe, offers the reader much needed help in
navigating this complex area of research for which numerous questions
and problems have yet to be resolved. (For me, this collection aids
in the identification of musical instruments while researching music
in medieval archival records of French cities, which has been a
recurring challenge.) The essays are organized into six categories:
the classification of musical instruments, keyboards, plucked strings,
bowed strings, winds, and finally, the repertory. The value of this
collection lies in McGee's selection of complementary essays that not
only offer information on the construction of multiple instruments,
but also on their social context.

The introduction by McGee, who has long been immersed in these complex
issues, provides brief summaries of the construction and use of
principal instruments and their repertory, along with an explanation
of the challenges in research. Evident in the introduction, McGee
recognizes the need for background knowledge when reading these
specialized essays. The index for these essays is also valuable,
helping the reader to compare perspectives and evidence pertaining to
a specific instrument.

Each group of essays offers a variety of perspectives. For example,
each of the essays from the opening group on the "Classification and
Lists of Instruments" draws from distinct types of evidence. Edmund
Bowles' essay on Haut and Bas groupings of instruments
draws from multiple sources, including poems and archival evidence
cutting across broad geography and time. Christopher Page draws upon
a single fourteenth-century treatise by Konrad Megenberg on the
education and concerns of a prince. Joscelyn Godwin provides
iconographic analysis of sculpture on churches, as well as a
consideration of Machaut's poem Le Remède de Fortune. Anthony
Baines draws from the well-known treatise on musical instruments by
Tinctoris, and Richard Rastall utilizes household account books,
especially those of English royalty. Offering a multi-angled
geographic perspective, in the section on bowed string instruments,
Howard Brown addresses the fiddle in Italy, Mary Remnant in England,
and Keith Polk in Germany.

While the titles of many of these studies suggest a focus on the
construction of a particular instrument, much broader questions are
entertained by these scholars. For example, while the diversity in
design and tuning are addressed in the essays on bowed instruments, so
are much larger social and musical questions. From iconographic
evidence from fourteenth-century Italy, Howard Brown, in his article
"The Trecento Fiddle and its Bridges," draws conclusions concerning
the social standing of musicians and instruments, as well as connects
the instrument to repertoires of music, particularly secular
polyphony.

Through the compilation of related essays, this collection also allows
the reader to make sense of the often controversial and contradictory
scholarship concerning the history of an instrument. For example, the
section on the slide trumpet contains six essays that try to establish
the history of this enigmatic instrument based primarily upon
iconographic evidence, which has proven to be problematic. As McGee
points out in his introduction, the very existence of the instrument
continues to be called into question.

In the Preface to the series, Music in Medieval Europe, general
editor, Thomas Kelly, indicates that the intention is to represent the
"best current scholarship," which is incongruous with this collection;
while over half of the articles date from the 1970's or earlier,
including one from the 1940's, only three date from the 1990's, with
none of the articles dating from this century. In general, I am not
suggesting that more current articles should have been selected in
place of these, but why these articles are still considered among the
"best current scholarship" deserves discussion in the introduction.
The surge in interest in the performance of medieval music in the
1960's undoubtedly prompted much of this scholarship. Well over half
of the authors in this volume are or were actively involved in the
performance of early music during their career, and as musician-
scholars, they have sought practical questions concerning this
repertoire. The general concerns reflected in more recent scholarship
addressing medieval instrumental culture, if it is not the
construction and repertory of musical instruments, warrant
consideration in the introduction. More than one article by seven of
the authors appear in the collection, including four by Edmund Bowles
and three by Christopher Page, and this choice to not include a
broader cross-section of scholars has yielded a more narrow impression
of work being conducted on medieval musical instruments.

Two of the oldest articles in the collection in particular challenge
the purpose of the series: Edmond Bowles' "Musical Instruments at the
Medieval Banquet" (1958) and "Musical Instruments in Civic Processions
during the Middle Ages" (1958). The seminal nature of the article by
Bowles entitled, "Haut and Bas: The Grouping of Musical Instruments in
the Middle Ages," dating from 1954, justifies its inclusion, though
the choice to include these other two articles in the final section on
"Repertory" is less evident. I have returned to these two articles
recently in my work, and I had forgotten how rich and diverse his
references were to medieval instrumental practices. And yet while the
articles are valuable, they do not represent current scholarship in
their style and approach, as Bowles draws on numerous sources and
touches on numerous locations. In contrast to the trend for more
narrowly defined musicological studies, these articles reflect the
value of past scholarship in which a generalized view of a topic is
projected. The article by Lloyd Hibberd from 1946, entitled "On
'Instrumental Style' in Early Melody," evaluates the basic concept of
"instrumental," responding to Arnold Schering's distinction at the
beginning of the twentieth century between instrumental and vocal
music. If these ideas still warrant inclusion on a volume on current
research on medieval instrumental music, a more extensive evaluation
of current trends in scholarship needs to be offered.